The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it may be described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present technology.
Vehicles and automobiles have been provided the option to have automatic exterior lighting controls for quite some time. Generally, an ambient light detection unit measures a level of ambient light and controls the on and off or delay off, operation. Of course, the automatic nature of the controls can be turned off and/or overridden. Alternatively, certain vehicles are not provided with automatic controls, and the exterior lighting is fully manually controlled.
In certain situations, safety reasons may dictate the use of high beam headlights. Although most drivers revert back to low beam headlights when an another oncoming vehicle is approaching, certain drivers may forget or otherwise fad to switch the operational status, which may affect visibility of other drivers. In other situations, a driver may forget to turn on the headlights or appropriate exterior lights altogether, and not have proper visibility. Still further, it may be difficult or impossible for other drivers to detect the presence of the other vehicle without operational exterior lights. Current methods of relying on a driver to quickly notice this situation and subsequently flash its high beam headlights at a vehicle, or sound a horn etc., may be an inadequate notification for alerting another driver of its unsafe exterior lighting operational status.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved system and method for automatically alerting a vehicle driver of an unsafe exterior lighting operational status.